In May of 2017, Universal Pictures announced that the Tom Cruise led The Mummy reboot would be the beginning of its own cinematic universe known as the Dark Universe. This cinematic universe would see Johnny Depp as the Invisible Man, Russell Crowe as Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, Javier Bardem as Frankenstein’s monster and Angelina Jolie was long rumored to join as the monster’s bride. Those of us who love the Universal classic monster films were thrilled by this announcement. To bring such incredible talent to our beloved monster films was a sign of great things, because why would they sign on if the material was anything less than amazing? Two weeks after this announcement, The Mummy was released and it became apparent almost immediately that this new film was both the beginning and the end for the Dark Universe.
2017’s The Mummy reboot is the latest attempt to bring back the classic Universal monsters, but not the only one. In 2014, Luke Evans starred in Dracula Untold. Before that, in 2010, Benicio del Toro starred in The Wolfman. Hugh Jackman starred in Van Helsing in 2004 and Brendan Fraser’s The Mummy trilogy began years before that. Not one of these movies had a positive critical reception and only Brendan Fraser’s first The Mummy film holds a Rotten Tomatoes rating above 50%.
To understand why these reboots keep failing, one must first understand what made the originals be as successful as they were. 1931’s Dracula and Frankenstein essentially established what the horror genre would be for decades to come. For decades, Universal gave audiences terrifying monsters they had only ever read about in books. It gave life to beloved horror myths and stories. They used incredibly creepy and well-made set pieces to create a frightening atmosphere. Additionally, they used superb make-up and costumes to make these monsters look real.
All of the modern reboots, except The Wolfman, failed to even attempt to do any of these things. Instead, they opted to go for an action-adventure type of film with some horror elements. Both Brendan Fraser and Tom Cruise’s The Mummy films tried too hard to be the Indiana Jones of the horror genre. Dracula Untold tried to humanize Dracula and make him sympathetic to the point where it completely took away any part of him that was scary. Van Helsing very clumsily tied multiple plotlines together while constantly throwing CGI at the viewer’s face. Only The Wolfman tried to go back to what the originals did, but it failed because it was uninspired, painfully slow-moving and convoluted with unnecessary plotlines.
It’s somewhat easy to understand why Universal did this. Most of these stories are stories that have been around for literally hundreds of years (Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein novel turned 200 this year), and there has been an endless amount of adaptations of them. If you are going to keep telling the same stories over and over, you have to find new ways to reinvigorate them. However, completely changing everything about these characters and using their names as a way to draw audiences in is not the way to do it. There are so many things you can do, not just with today’s technology, but with today’s social climate. Dracula, for example, tackles the fear of the “other” and the unknown. Frankenstein is a representation of what it really means to be a monster and the dangers of attempting to play God. These themes are still relevant today and offer a myriad of possibilities for making great movies.
For the casual movie fan, especially younger ones, watching movies that are over 70 years old and in black-and-white can be a daunting task. It’s hard to live in a world where streaming services offer thousands of modern films and still choose to go out of your way to find a film that is near 100 years old. It is so worth it, though, especially if you are horror fans, for these are some of the building blocks of the genre. Maybe you are tired of seeing Dracula, The Mummy and Frankenstein. That’s fine and, quite frankly, understandable. Maybe try giving The Invisible Man a shot. In it you will find a terrifying story about man who is driven to madness after successfully discovering the secret to invisibility. Perhaps an unfamiliar story such as that will open the doors to exploring some of the other more popular titles. Either way, there is more to these stories than meaningless action. There is real depth to them. They are as tragic and beautiful as they are scary.
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